Fabio Luisi Tweets About Death Of Conductor Angleo Campori

Fabio Luisi took to Twitter on November 25 to discuss the death of fellow Italian conductor Angelo Campori. Luisi also commented that Campori, who died at age 79, "was one of the last Italian conductors who knew exactly what Italian opera means and how to conduct it." Maestro Campori worked with many of the great opera sopranos: Renata Scotto, Maria Chiara, Raina Kabaivanska, Giusy Devinu, and Anna Caterina Antonacci. "For the soundtrack to Woody Allen's Hannah and her Sisters, the indie film auteur, who knows his opera, plumped for an authentically Italian excerpt from Puccini's Manon Lescaut. The cast was from the Ragio Theater of Turin, the conductor was Angelo Campori. And the complete performance from which that was taken is indicative of the conductor Campori became--a noted exponent of musical Italy. It featured in its cast good voices that were idiomatically Italianate, with Maria Chiara and Nicola Martinucci in the leads...His closest associations were with the Teatro Regio in Parma and with the Verona Arena. But he had an American profile, as well. He had been close to Leonard Bernstein and had performed at the Metropolitan Opera, in Philadelphia and elsewhere. He had been seriously ill a decade ago and had required heart surgery, since when he'd been almost completely unable to perform. He left several recordings. As well as that Manon Lescaut, there's a film of Lucia Di Lammermoor from Parma starring Alfredo Kraus and Luciana Serra, Soliva's rarely-heard Guilia E Sesto Pompeo on the CPO label and Licinio Refice's Cecilia with Renata Scotto on VAI Audio." [Source] More about the conductor, and a riveting performance he conducted of Renato Bruson in "Cortigiani, vil razza dannata" from Verdi's Rigoletto, after the jump.

Woody Allen Film "To Rome With Love" Features Fabio Armiliato

The tenor with Woody Allen and Judy Davis
(Photo: Philippe Antonello/Photomovie)

"In the latest stop on Woody Allen’s cinematic tour of Europe, the Eternal City clichés are laid on as thick as a Quattro Stagione pizza topping. Lovers romance amidst atmospherically-lit ruins; Vespas buzz past al fresco trattoria tables; the cutting-edge soundtrack opens with Volare, and a humble traffic policeman has an apartment overlooking the Spanish Steps (presumably he won the lottery, but likes his job too much to quit). There are times when it makes Roman Holiday look like a neo-realist classic. In the end, though it has a certain charm, To Rome With Love is little more than a travel brochure with jokes. That said, the multi-stranded To Rome With Love is a likeable enough capriccio, with much of the pleasure coming from watching an all-star cast enjoying themselves like kids at the back of the bus. But it’s not Midnight in Paris, lacking the high-concept premise and the plausible relationship dramas that gave that equally soft-focus paean to the French capital a certain dramatic heft, and helped to turn it into Woody’s biggest ever box-office result. If that was Four Weddings And A Funeral, this is Love, Actually: a chocolate assortment where everyone is sure to find a flavour they like, and if they don’t they can always admire the packaging. Allen’s latest premiered in Italy a good two months before its debut in the US (where Sony Pictures Classics will give it a limited release on 22 June, a week after the film does the opening honours at the Los Angeles Film Festival). This has a lot to do with the muscle of majority backer Medusa Film, but is hardly calculated to give the film a good send-off, given the Italian critics’ predictably lukewarm reception to a film that was widely

O Sole Mio??

dismissed for peddling outdated Dolce Vita stereotypes....First up is the tale of Hayley (Pill, who played Zelda Fitzgerald of Midnight In Paris), a lone American turista in Rome who finds herself a fiancé when she asks Michelangelo (Parenti) a handsome, politically committed young Italian architect, the way to the Trevi Fountain. Allen and Judy Davis play the bride-to-be’s New Yorker parents, while opera tenor Fabio Armiliato puts in a sparkling performance, at the centre of one of the film’s more inspired comic scenarios, as the future bridegroom’s father – an undertaker with a talent for singing in the shower." [Source] Trailer is after the jump.

Woody Allen Samples Mozart and Prokofiev in "Love and Death"

The 1975 Woody Allen classic, Love and Death, features Mozart's overture from Die Zauberflöte playing during a scene at the opera. The film also makes heavy use of  "Plescheyevo Lake" from Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky.